Melekizedek and The Priesthood of the Firstborn

Updated June 11, 2014

Part I  From Adam To Sinai

Introducing Melekizedek In The Book of Hebrews

The Book of Hebrews asserts, in the mystery of Melekizedek, that he is one who is without ancestry. This statement, just as the title, Melekizedek itself, pertains to the office.  In that office he was as a person who was first, who had no human father. He was in the office of the seed of the woman, like unto the son of G-d.  

The person who filled that office, who came out an met Abraham to bless him, who was a king in the then Jebusite city of Salem.  It will be seen through a study of the priesthood of the firstborn and through the received tradition of the sages of Israel that this king of Salem was Shem, the firstborn son of Noah.*
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*It does not add to a faithful interpretation of the Book of Hebrews to state that the Sages must be wrong and we cannot know who it was who was filling the office of Melekizedek. The meaning is that in that office Shem was not Shem, but the representative convert to the faith and hope of the resurrection of the dead.

Background of the Mystery of Melekizedek

The priesthood of Melekizedek is mysterious because it is the priesthood of Adam* after Adam was sentenced to death for sin. More, it is mysterious because it was instituted by Adam before Adam had been given any direct authorization by God for such a priesthood to represent the possibility of hope.
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*It will be seen that Adam himself personally came to act in the role of a priest. To begin with, however, in the statement that the priesthood of Melekizedek is the priesthood of Adam, the name, Adam, can be understood corporately. As such, the name, "Adam", can be translated, "Humanity".  

We first see the role of priesthood clearly in the actions of the sons of Adam, Cain and Able.  The conversation of Adam and his sons that lead to their bringing sacrifices and prayers for Humanity before G-d is not revealed to us.  However, we know that it was through the conversation of Adam that his sons were ordained to act as they did in the role of priests. Because Cain was the firstborn the service of Able was dependent on the service of Cain.  Eve saw it as a sign of hope that a son had been born to her at all under the sentence of death.  This was in accordance with the promise that G-d had made concerning her seed.  Thus, the natural promise of the inheritance of the world that was carried in the birth of the firstborn was itself given new support and a new foundation of hope.  In this way, the meaning of the firstborn became the order of priesthood.

The mystery of this priesthood of the firstborn became accentuated when G-d accepted Able's offering in preference to Cain's offering.  It was then made evident that it was not sufficient to simply be the natural born firstborn.  In order for the service of the priest to be accepted by G-d it had to have the quality of the confession that G-d desired.


Adam and Melekizedek

Indeed, this priesthood, which was carried by Noah to Shem, who was Melekizedek, was ultimately based on Adam having been the first human being.  It was the priesthood of the firstborn, but it was priesthood, the representation of the one person for the whole of Humanity, because it was the firstborn of Adam, the first human being, the corporate human being.  However, being the first human being was no longer simply a virtue.  Adam had become a sinner and was under the curse of God and the sentence of death.  The hope that Adam based this priesthood on, (and then following Adam, Seth in place of Abel, and Noah and Shem),  was always to be confessed as a mysterious hope.  Had this priesthood not been honestly represented as mysterious by its priests, a false testimony from the order of the priesthood could have resulted.  A false impression could have been given to the world by the fact of their being a priesthood of the firstborn at all that, as the serpent claimed, Adam's crime would not necessarily result in the death of all.

Although it was Able, the firstborn, who first acted as a true priest of repentance and hope toward G-d, who expressed hope through sacrifice,  Adam had himself laid the foundation for this priesthood when, even after they had sinned, he named his wife cHavah, (Eve), the Mother of All Living.  Adam did this after overhearing G-d promise that an offspring of the woman would destroy the offspring of the serpent. By giving to his wife a personal name that was an everlasting confession of hope and faith in redemption, Adam blessed the world in the role of a priest.  While Cain was disqualified from the priesthood when he killed Able, Abel had successfully begun this firstborn priesthood of hope and, while G-d did not formally institute it from above, he did show acceptance of it, and in time Adam, as head of Humanity, instituted it from below through his own act of repentance and expression of hope in G-d, when he returned to cHavah to conceive Seth.  

Adam embraced the priesthood of hope.  It was carried on by other of his children, after Abel was killed.  But, even when Adam fully repented and returned to cHavah his wife, so that Seth was born, God did not yet formally sanction the priesthood of Adam's firstborn, even when he saved Noah and his family from the great flood.  G-d did not make the promise of the seed of the woman directly to the woman nor to the man, but spoke the promise directly to the serpent and against the serpent.  The only hope that G-d gave directly to the man and the woman came in a form of concealment in a form of mitigation of judgment.  All expressions of confession and prayer for Humanity after this arose directly from below, from the initiative of the man and woman themselves.  In the same way, after the flood, G-d did not promise Noah that he would not destroy the world again under any circumstances.  And he did not promise Noah that he would bless all the world through him.  He only promised him and made a covenant that he would not destroy the world again by water.


Abraham and Melekizedek

All of this changed when God called Abraham and began to clarify the mysterious hope that caused the day of Adam's personal death to be stretched out into a thousand years — and was causing the death of corporate Adam to be stretched out into seven thousand years.  In calling Abraham, God for the first time gave the promise of the offspring of the woman to a specific member of the family of Adam.  Before Abraham this promise had not been made as a promise to anyone but only as a promise against the serpent, which God had spoken in the Garden of Eden.  Now, in Abraham and his seed, God did not so much sanction the priesthood of the firstborn instituted by Adam, as transform that priesthood into a new priesthood based on his own direct and immediate calling.

This fact is enigmatically taught by the commentary of the sages of Israel on the passage on Abraham and Melekzedek meeting recorded in Genesis.  The sages teach that because Shem failed to bless God before Abraham the priesthood was taken away from him and given to Abraham.  For Abraham never failed to honor God first, and therefore more than the creature.  

This teaching of the sages is a necessary teaching, in that there is an aspect in which there is a cutting off of the old order and of putting the new order in its place. However, on an other level, there was also an acceptance of (Shem's), Melekzedek's, testimony that the true hope and blessing of Adam was to be found in the word of God spoken to Abraham.  The accepted testimony of Shem is the prototype of the final and ultimate rejoicing of the nations with Israel in the final and ultimate redemption of Israel, because it is this that results in the blessing of all families of the earth.  Here is the deepest depth of the priesthood of Melekizedek.  When this is fully understood it will become possible to understand how and why it is that Mashiach is made a priest after the order of Melekizedek only through the resurrection of the dead, and how his prayers are all prayers of atonement.

And so there is a certain way in which the priesthood of the firstborn coming through Noah was redeemed and fully and formally sanctified by God, even as he was formally setting it aside for the sake of the priesthood of Abraham.  For Shem, in blessing Abraham was making himself a convert to the faith of Abraham and not only himself but also the whole order of his priesthood.  This was a great and mysterious act, for it was made the basis upon which Abraham's relationship to Adam would also be redeemed.

Part II From Sinai To Mashiach

When Israel was redeemed from Egypt it was on the basis of all of the firstborn of Egypt being slain, but the firstborn of Israel being preserved alive on the basis of the blood of the Passover Lamb.  The death of the Passover Lamb was, so to speak, the death of the priesthood of the order of Melekizedek, which same priesthood of the firstborn was, spiritually speaking, then resurrected in the priesthood of the firstborn of Israel. For Melekizedek was the king of a Jebusite city, which, like Egypt, was a city of Adam before the covenant of redemption, and of the new Adam, was made with Abraham.  The service of the priesthood of Melekizedek from Salem was also for Egypt, even as Egypt was made to represent the whole world at the time of the captivity of Israel.  For the service of the priesthood of Melekizedek comprehended all Adam.

There could be a priesthood of Abraham, called to the blessing of the world, called to the certain promise of the resurrection of the dead, but only on the basis of the carrying out of God's word in the sentence of death upon Adam.  Thus, the firstborn of Israel would forever always have to be redeemed by blood, in a way acknowledging the necessity of the carrying out of the sentence of death upon Adam, individually and corporately.  This commandment was, therefore, the witness given with assurance through the very existence of the firstborn of Israel, that there would come a resurrection of the dead.

In this way, God had created for himself a priesthood of the firstborn, a priesthood of a certain hope.  For Mashiach to be called a priest after the order of Melekzedek is to refer to him, by implication, as the Passover Lamb, which lamb represented the death and redemption from death of all of the firstborn of Israel, in a substitutionary way.  Because the blood of the lamb would be seen as the blood of the firstborn of Israel, the angel of death would passover their houses.  It was not that they were any less subject to the sentence of death than any other children of Adam but that they were made to be a sign of the promise of the resurrection of the dead.

In this way, the priesthood of Melekzedek was redeemed from being a priesthood of a world condemned to death and was given over to the priesthood of the firstborn of Israel as a priesthood of the certain hope of the resurrection of the dead.  When Israel sinned with the golden calf the priesthood of the firstborn of the tribes of Israel could no longer serve this testimony in this office.  The place and the office of the priesthood was therefore filled by the firstborn of the tribe of Levi, which tribe did not partake in the sin of the golden calf.

Now it is evident that this substitution of the firstborn of all the tribes of Israel by the descendants of the firstborn, Aaron, and by the one tribe, could only be until the one who God promised against the serpent came, the one who would be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  It is he who causes the firstborn of all Israel to live.  Therefore it is to be understood that Israel's sin is removed through him and the priesthood of the firstborn is restored to all of the tribes.  This is the redeemed priesthood of the order of, the confession of, Melekizedek.  And the Mashiach of Israel, anointed by God, though not yet anointed by all the tribes of Israel, is, being the firstborn of the dead of the tribe of Judah, made the High Priest of Israel continually, eternally, in heavenly places, according to the order of Melekizedek.

NEW: Mellow Wolf Journal

Early Christian signs

Following is an excerpt
from the first issue of the new publication,
Mellow Wolf Journal.

Century upon century, Christianity has been defined by some gentile ideas that have dominated it.  These ideas were built from early limited thoughts that God had finished with the lesson of showing Humanity that no person or nation could be obedient and righteous enough to live forever.   The thought was, that because this lesson was finished with the death of the Messiah, God no longer had a need to present Himself as a national God.

As a result of this kind of limited thinking Christianity developed as a system of religion that focused on the idea of the salvation of the individual apart, as opposed to salvation of Humanity as a corporate entity.  A theory developed that a new form of Humanity would be constructed out of the assembly of the redeemed individuals, those individuals who were saved by grace from Humanities apparently incorrigible nature as a whole.  Instead of sounding like good news to Israel and therefore to Humanity as the one entity that God created, this theology began to sound like good news only for those who were its adherents.  As such, it started to have the same ring as any other religion, all of which sounded like good news for those who were its representatives.

The time will come when Christianity is redefined entirely, not just reformed.  The time will come when Christianity matures and realizes that it was not wise to become a set institution before it was able to fully understand the good news about the Messiah of Israel.  The time will come when Christianity is defined by complete repentance from its former theology that lost sight of the salvation of everything that makes Humanity one entity.

Files from FilesAnywhere

The tribe of Benjamin is like a wolf and will lie down with the Lamb of the tribe of Judah

Download the first issue of Mellow Wolf Journal from:

Files from FilesAnywhere

Jerusalem and Bolivia

In a series of files entitled, Jerusalem and Bolivia, I am setting out to write a comprehensive overview of how the Great Assignment will be fulfilled through the Restorative Justice of God based on the Apocalyptic Justification of Israel, and therefore of Adam, that has been created by Yehoshua the Messiah of Eternal Torah Israel.

To read more of my Jerusalem and Bolivia files start with this link.

On the Issue of The Virgin Birth

Matthew 1:22-23 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which 
was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall 
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

We read in Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin 
shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. That is the King James Version.  
In the Jewish Publication Society translation we have: Therefore the Lord Himself 
shall give you a sign: behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and 
shall call his name Immanuel.  
The Hebrew is: לכן יתן אדני הוא לכם--אות  הנה העלמה הרה וילדת בן וקראתשמו עמנו אל ...  We are led to the following considerations:

Continue reading from the Mellow Wolf Matthew Files:

Link > Chapter 1 ˙Commentary and Notes on vs. 22-23

Matthew

Chapter 1 Text

Luke 14:26; 15:18-22

This is a particularly challenging and important passage. Only through a Hebraic analysis of the language, like that of Bivin's here, is the great revelation of this passage accessible.  First, let us consider what David Bivin is offering.

First, by bringing out the play on עליה (aliyah, going up), we begin immediately to see an association between Elijah going up to Mount Carmel and the thought of James and John in asking if they should call fire down from heaven.

Next, we see from Bivin's notes that the text is simply saying that when the time came for Yehoshua to go up to Jerusalem he did so.

Bivin gives us to understand that "his face was walking" simply means that he was walking.  In dialogue with Bivin, we might offer that idiom's like this may be only poetic ways of saying what might otherwise be said simply in a prosaic manner but when a language uses an idiom like this there is some semantic reason for it.  At the very least, the poetry of the idiom creates and accent of thought.  Here we might suggest that the accent of thought is that there is a special gravitas in his walking. 

Once we have Bivin's clear and simple translation, it is possible to hear from the text the message that this episode is a lesson in "not competing with evil doers," as David Bivin has read out from the passage.  However, using his translation, it is possible to also hear something more than this.  It is possible to hear a message in this passage about the right way of revealing Mashiach.  

It was to a Samaritan woman that Yehoshua said, "Salvation is of the Jews".  Here two different attitudes about what it means that salvation is of the Jews might be discerned.  On is the attitude of James/Yaacov and John/Yochanan at this time.  The other is the attitude of Yehoshua.

The covenant of God's peace is not simply to be understood as a model of Messianic pacifism that the world is to learn in the Messianic Era.  It is a covenant of the salvation of the Jewish people which turns the world inside out and upside down, overthrowing the turmoil inherent in the time of this "day of death" by ruling over it with the peace of Eternity. 

The Beginning of Our Thought

We know that immorality does not preserve the world, but rather that faithfulness preserves the world.  Nevertheless, like Eve and Adam in the first story recorded in the Bible, human beings predictably do not choose to begin their thinking with faithfulness to God, by going to God for help when they do not know how to determine what the truth is.  We see from our own experience that human beings most often are not faithful at all.  Knowing from experience that unfaithfulness, immorality, does not preserve the world we choose immorality anyway because it seems to be the way that we can assert our own independence and freedom of will.

By choosing immorality and not faithfulness we think that we are opening up all possibilities.  Anything is possible.  I think and therefore I am becomes the beginning of our thought.  No one can force us to accept what reality is because we can always imagine that reality might be something else.  All the time our experience tells us that unfaithfulness does not preserve life.  Unfaithfulness does not preserve the world.  In the end unfaithfulness only causes us endless pain.  Still we choose to be unfaithful, deciding that we must begin our thought with our independence.

If we end up in the belief in pantheism it is because we are full of nothing but ourselves.  We know from our experience that little things that are puffed up and full of nothing but themselves are not good for anything in the end, and that if they get so puffed up that they can no longer contain themselves they break into many fragments and no one can ever find them all.  The more time goes on the more our experience tells us that human beings are little things with very little power and not exempt from this principle that little things that get puffed up and full of themselves eventually destroy themselves.  Still, generally thinking human beings remain unafraid of deciding to begin their thought on the basis of immorality: I think therefore I am, rather than on the basis of faithfulness to others and ultimately and primarily faithfulness to God.

There are a minority of people in the world who do fear ending up in such terrifying pantheism, who regret having chosen immorality and seek to turn to faithfulness as it is revealed in the Bible.  Such people are usually found among Jews or Christians, where the Bible is found.  I will speak here first of the nature of the beginning of thought for Christians who seek the faithfulness of the Bible, for this is my own experience.  I will then speak of how the beginning of thought for the Christian, when it originates with the faithfulness revealed in the Bible, comes eventually to a recognition of its unity with the beginning and conclusion of the thought of the Jewish believer in the faithfulness that is revealed in the Bible.

What is the beginning of thought for the Christian believer?  It is the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or better transliterated, Yahoshua the Messiah.  And in recognizing this we are recognizing that the beginning of our thought as Christian believers is the Torah and Israel as defined by the covenant of God.  How do we know this?  If we try to imagine the Messiah in his death and resurrection entirely apart from his Biblical context we see that the foundation of our thought and all clarity of our hope is taken away from us.  Thus, if we examine the beginning of our thought we find that we attain clarity by understanding the death of the Messiah according to the Scriptures, and the burial and resurrection of the Messiah according to the Scriptures.  We find the beginning of our thought as Christian believers in the revelation of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, Yahoshua the Messiah of Israel in the Bible - not outside of or apart from the Bible.

What is it that we are saying when we say this?  We are saying that we see that the beginning of the thought of Jesus, Yahoshua the Messiah, was the Torah and Israel, that the beginning of his thought was the faithfulness of God revealed in God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and with all Israel.  We see that our hope in being restored to the truth of faithfulness from the deception of immorality is the trust that the Messiah of Israel had in the faithfulness of God expressed in God's covenant with Israel.  And we see that this faithfulness of God has been revealed to us and has convinced us that it should become the beginning of our thought through God having raised the Messiah from the dead in that faithfulness toward Israel, according to His covenant with Israel.

There is One Covenant

It is very often taught that in the Bible there is the making a number of covenants.  Usually this begins with Noah and the rainbow but sometimes begins with Adam.  In this way God's covenant with Abraham is seen as being one in a list that includes the covenant of circumcision, the Mosaic or Sinai covenant, God's covenant with David, the new covenant, and sometimes others.  This idea of many covenants is the result of the need to translate a fundamental idea from the Hebrew language and consciousness into English and other gentile languages and forms of thought.  There is really only one covenant of God just as there is only one word of God.  The idea of God's covenant is the idea of God's personally giving His word to someone.  God first personally gave His world to Abraham.  Since then He has not personally given His word to anyone other than Israel.  It is true that personally gave His word to Noah and that He called this a covenant, but in truth He only gave His word in part to Noah.  That is, what He said or promised to Noah was limited in its nature and even what He promised him was conditional.  God did not promise Noah that He would never destroy the earth again or that if he destroyed the earth He would save even eight souls.  God only promised Noah that He would not destroy the earth again by water.  He did not give His personal word to Noah that He would bless the earth.  Even to preserve the world from further dissolution and the cutting off of the line of Noah, so that no life would be saved, It was necessary for God to personally make His covenant with Abraham.

Bamidbar

G-d's commandment of the firstborn, of the Levite, of the Tabernacle, etc., is Israel.  This is to say, The commandment brings Israel to G-d and so Israel is Israel ... This is the meaning of corporate Israel...

Read more

Soul

As soon as the discussion of the soul is translated out of Hebrew into English confusion is generated disguised as clarity.  For example, a statement like, There are five souls, or levels of soul, and within these the nephesh is the animal soul and the neshama is the human soul is really a statement of confusion, even though it is intended as a statement of clarification.  In fact the statement only works at all because the English word soul is used as a generic term in this mixed Hebrew/English form of speaking and is not used in its normal English sense.  This is not explained, however and therefore misunderstanding is generated.  If the English word, soul, were not made to serve this purpose the statement would make no sense.  How would it make sense, for example, to say, There are five nepheshim or levels of the nephesh and within these the nephesh is the animal nephesh and the neshama is the human nephesh?

Avoiding the strong delusion

The strong delusion that causes belief of the lie is the assertion of the serpent that you shall not die if you eat of the tree of the kowledge of good and evil, that God knows that you shall be like God, knowing good and evil. Avoid this delusion when it comes in the form of the assertion that your soul is by nature immortal and cannot die, being an aspect of the Divinity.

Here is the sense in which your soul is by nature an aspect of the Divinity: the spirit which God breathed into the nostrils of Adam was not a neshama that could not die (as the serpent is prone to suggest) but was a trial soul, as it were, a trial neshama. That Adam would possess this soul for eternity depended on Adam passing the trial. God told Adam that if they ate of the tree forbidden to them they would not pass the trial. They would certainly die. Know this.

The neshama which Adam received was made to be immortal because it was made to pass the trial - but because it was made for this trial it was also possible that it could fail to pass the trial. It is an incomplete statement to say that Adam's soul was an aspect of the Divinity. To state this as though it were a complete statement is misleading. It is a complete statement and therefore true only when it is said that it is an aspect of the Divine Power. And further, it needs to be said that this means that it was the act of God's breathing into the nostrils of Adam and not that which He breathed which caused Adam to live. Actually these things need to be articulated and explained in full before any of these statements can be called complete and true.

In what sense was Adam's soul made as an aspect of the Divine Power?  It was not so independently.  For what is created and made is not independent.  Neither was it originally.  For what is created and made is not original.  Adam's soul was made as an aspect of the Divine Power in the sense that it was and is being expressed by the Sustaining Utterance, the Word of God.  As such it is dependent and not original.  It is dependent for existence continually and also for the measure and definition of its existence, its relationship to the Word which expresses it, to the One whose Word it is.  Thus it cannot be stated theologically that the soul of Adam was or is immortal, for it is defined only by the Word of God which is sustaining it.  The Word of God may cease to express the soul of Adam at anytime that God wills.  Accordingly, He said to Adam, do not eat of the tree in the midst of the Garden, for the day you eat thereof in dying you shall die - in being capable of death/mortality, you shall experience it and not rise again.  It is inadequate even as theology, and certainly as a direct reading of Scripture, to separate the body and the soul in this sentence of God given to Adam - as if to say your body will die but your soul won't die because it is immortal and cannot die.  This is the actual theological notion behind the idea that all that is involved in death is the separation of the soul from the body.  This confusion arises first of all because the corporate soul of Adam is not distinguished from the souls of the children of Adam.  Time is still involved in the deaths of the children, until the end of the generations, then everything returns to the head, the corporate soul of Adam and time is no longer involved and al time is one day, the day that Adam sinned.  It then becomes self-evident that if Adam's body cannot be raised from the dead Adam's soul is no more than the smoke of its dust and ashes.  And the resurrection cannot come by Adam.  It can come only by another, by the Son of Adam.

The strong delusion that is coming upon the world that the world should believe a lie is none other than materialism, not just scientific materialism but philosophic and religous materialism, as well as commercial materialism as a common sense interpretation for life.  All these are one thing and all of them deny the mortality of the soul.  It does not seem that athiestic materialism denies the mortality of the soul.  It seems just the opposite.  Actually, athiestic materialism is athiestic is most often more for the purpose of affirming the immortality of what it might more likely call the human spirit than it is athiestic for the purpose of denying the existence of God.  Materialism is the dogmatic insistence that not only can nothing be known than what can be demonstrated through the proof of the physical senses but also nothing exists except what can be eventually known in this manner.  Thus the premise of materialism is self-deification, for it asserts dogmatically that we alone (and any life form like us) are the only knower and verifier of existence.  If an individual walks up and down the street saying aggressively, "I am God," we call such a person delusional. They will probably be locked up and put on heavy medication.  But the whole world that is fast coming to believe in the lie of materialism is no less claiming that we all together are God and the only God that does or can exist and yet this is not recognized as delusional.